Cloudburst
by alpha aquarii
Summary: [The Earthquake Bird by Susanna Jones] Teiji has something he wants to give Lucy. One last memory he doesn't need to keep. Oneshot, vague LucyTeiji.


Lyrics belong to Annie Lennox, who(m?) I have traced the song from page 116 to. This is a sort of pointless oneshot, just something I wrote while feeling kind of numb. Takes place after book ends.

**Cloudbursts**

Teiji. Teiji, made of ice, made of rain.

Those photos, I'd seen them and stored them away in my mind to retain. Like everything else of his, the memories were deemed priceless, all I felt like remembering. But it isn't the memories that fill my mind, swimming round and round under the bed and making me feel foreign even under Mrs. Katoh's care. Because I lie there and know, I am not alone. I find it hard to sleep these nights through, knowing Sachi is under my covers, and that Teiji waits with a camera.

My eyes are hollow when I look into the mirror, unlike Lily's—they never looked fuller than in death, in depth, and they scream things so loudly I can hear them all the way in my dreams. Sometimes in a whisper, sometimes in a trill, but her eyes always _scream_ when they finds me. Like a hidden message, something I'm supposed to decipher from her pupils. I want to rest in a silence, not in a scream. Not from a voice that I still hear today singing to me. _In love we're all the same, we're walking down an empty street…empty street, empty night…the downtown lights._

Not from someone who can trace me without fear now, someone who finds me and doesn't leave.

Of course, part of that is my own doing.

I close my eyes and let the flood creep towards shore, inch by agonizing inch in tides. Heaping bowls of noodles and fragrances of empty golden poppies. A cello, bow dancing on strings, missing and breaking notes. Planks of wood and apples.

The phone rings, and I have to remind myself this is not my apartment anymore.

"Lucy? It's for you."

Lucy knows it can't be for her. None of the phone calls are ever for her, but she stumbles from the bedroom to the sitting room where Mrs. Katoh stretches her arm, holding the offensive device out to Lucy—and she accepts it.

"Hello?"

Mrs. Katoh leaves the room and I hold the phone an inch from the front of my face so my mouth is directly aligned with the tiny holes on the bottom of the phone. I glare at it and pretend my gaze will burn the person on the other end. "Hello?" I say again.

"Lucy." A tinny voice responds flatly, and I can hear it from the receiver end but not loudly enough so it can be identified. "Lucy."

"Yes."

A pause. It strikes me as both hesitant and contradictory. "You saw the pictures before they let you go."

I jam the phone to my ear. I'm very reflexive these days, to my disgust. "What?"

"You know. You saw her, I captured her," the man says softly. "Did they let you keep the pictures?"

"No." That voice is so goddamned smooth, unaffected; I have to live up to it and layer my tone with velvet to match. The pictures were a last view—but it could have been anyone who destroyed her. For all I knew, Andy had cornered Lily and broken the girl finally. But I don't think Andy carried a camera wherever he went. Only one person I knew did that.

"Oh." He doesn't stop to clear his throat or questionable conscience. "Come. Meet me. I want to give you something."

"What?"

"One last picture."

I don't know how I agreed, what I said, but Lucy was gone from the apartment minutes later, the phone hanging limp from its cord, dial tone bleeping in a state of loneliness.

-

Teiji. Teiji, made of ice, made of rain.

His form glows in the night, leaning against the wall with hands out of sight. Unmistakably Teiji, though I only see his back. I'd deliberately taken the long route around for two reasons. I could wonder what I was getting myself into on the way to the station, and I could meet him from behind.

I walk up to his back as close as I can get without touching. I want to see if his warmth radiates into the air now still, see if I can feel him if I shut off all other senses—

But he turns, and sees me so near I could stick out my tongue and lick his chin. This is Teiji, and in the dim light he obstructs from the station I can pick out familiar features, familiar when he was my lover. No wrinkles, no signs of stress. His face has not thinned or fattened and it lacks any sign of regret for his actions. It makes me angry.

"Here."

An extended hand. He pinches something in between his index and thumb. It's a photo, this time with no wrapping. I take it and purposefully brush against his fingers. No warmth lost. It feels like Teiji, but it can't be _all_ the same, can it?

I gaze at the picture. No flash that night—or was it day? Impossible to tell when it rains, _zaa zaa_ and the division between time is obscured—that night I was captured in a literal sense, caught within the boundaries of this photo forever.

It shows me from the side, standing in perfect profile form. I am imperfect—there is nothing beautiful about how I stand, how my dark hair sags on my shoulders and how I stare endlessly out into the distance. Teiji doesn't mind. He isn't giving me this photo because he thinks I will like it (I'm not sure how I feel about it, really), but it's a last tribute. I am soaked in the picture. Raindrops glance off my form, something the camera captures and graces. I look like a goddess stripped of her powers, a teenager who has lost her youth. I wouldn't go so far to say 'fallen angel' though, I like to think I am not so trite with my words and thoughts.

I notice the warmth in front of me is gone. Too late, I look up from the photo, but Teiji has disappeared.

I hold the photo in my right hand as I walk away from the platform. Just one lonely syllable passed in between us in person, but it was enough. Enough for me to enjoy the silence and Teiji's voice, each in the right amounts. The sky is darkening, a premature Apocalypse, but I know it is only going to rain. Again.

Teiji is gone for good this time. Lucy knows this. Lucy stares at the picture with her brain and legs on autopilot, soaking in the image. How he has captured her.

The rain falls, _potsu potsu_, but she knows that Teiji has made her immortal.

**End**


End file.
